Security
Since the Yocto Project is intended to be flexible and meet the needs of many applications, we leave policy-making decisions around security to our end users. Our goal instead is to ship each release with metadata that follows best practices in that we do not release recipe versions which are known to have significant security vulnerabilities. Generally this is done by upgrading recipes to newer versions that are no longer vulnerable to these issues.
Upgrading recipes to the newer versions in the maintenance branches is not always easy, this is why we provide a patch for the existing version instead if we detect a vulnerability in a package. The patches are added to the recipes, see example below:
poky/recipes-connectivity/bind/bind_9.9.5.bb SRC_URI = "ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/bind9/${PV}/${BPN}-${PV}.tar.gz \ file://conf.patch \ ... file://bind9_9_5-CVE-2014-8500.patch \
We are tracking security vulnerabilities in the Yocto Project against the National Vulnerability Database.
We also track CVEs reported to the oss-security list (Open Source Software Security) http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/
Yocto Security Team
The purpose of creating a security team in the Yocto project is to discuss, sync and organize security related activities.
The team's main responsibilities among others are:
- Scanning of security forums/mailing list(s) to detect security vulnerabilities reported by community
- Responsible for fixing CVEs in the Yocto releases & maintained branches
- Evaluation of tools for security tests
- Responsible for security related info in the Yocto documentations
- Hardening of Yocto release
How to Contact Yocto's security team Securely
We have set up two security-related mailing lists:
- 1) Public List
yocto [dash] security [at] yoctoproject[dot] com This is a public mailing list for anyone to subscribe to. This list is an open list to discuss public security issues/patches.
- 2) Private List
security [at] yoctoprojct [dot] org. (Forwards to the following addresses.)
For secure communications, please send your messages encrypted to sona [dot] sarmadi [at] enea [dot] com and mhalstead@linuxfoundation.org using the following GPG keys. Remember message headers are not encrypted so do not include sensitive information in the subject line.
Download public keys: Sona Sarmadi Michael Halstead
Anyone can contribute Yocto with security patches as before, but those volunteering to this security team will sync/organize security related activities and take more responsibility
Branches maintained with security fixes
| Major version | Current Version | Branch name | BitBake version | Maintainer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.7 | 1.7 | dizzy | 1.24 | Armin Kuster <akuster808@gmail.com> |
| 1.6 | 1.6.1 | daisy | 1.22 | Saul Wold <sgw@linux.intel.com> |
| 1.5 | 1.5.3 | dora | 1.20 | Robert Yang <liezhi.yang@windriver.com> |
| 1.4 | 1.4.3* | dylan | 1.18 | Paul Eggleton <paul.eggleton@linux.intel.com> |
| 1.3 | 1.3.2 | danny | 1.16 | Ross Burton <ross.burton@intel.com> |
All CVEs (security patches) should be backported to all branches above (if at all possible).
Versions in grey are no longer actively maintained, but well-tested security patches may still be accepted for them.)
See Stable branches maintenancefor detailed info regarding the policies and maintenance of Stable branch
Kernel security patches
Kernel security patches are backported to Linux-yoco kernels regularly from https://www.kernel.org/
Linux-yocto
linux-yocto_3.10 & linux-yocto_3.14 (maintainer: Ross Burton)
Vendor kernels
Kernel security patches are also backported to Linux-vendor kernels from https://www.kernel.org/
- meta-intel (meta-intel uses Linux-yocto)
- meta-fsl-ppc (maintainer: xxx)
- meta-fsl-arm (maintainer: xxx)
- meta-xilinx (maintainer: xxx)
- meta-ti (maintainer: xxx)
- etc
How to test
If there is any test case for the vulnerability by the upstream project or community
- Run the test to reproduce the problem and verify the correction. - Run the regression test
If there isn’t any test case and it is complicated and time consuming to write a testcase
- Run the regressions test
Regression test
- Build the core image for at least two architectures (preferably one big-endian and one little-endian)
- Run ptest (for those branches/packages that there is ptest mechanism)
Patch name convention and commit message
Security patches should have reference to the CVE identifier both in the patch file/s and the commit comment.
Please make sure to add the package name in the subject and the reference to the CVE. Example for the commit comment:
bash: CVE-2014-6278 <short description> <[YOCTO #xxx] if there is any> References E.g. link to CVE or other useful info/blog/advisory. Signed-off-by:
For additional guidelines refer to: Commit Patch Message Guidelines
Security Issues Addressed in Yocto Releases
Yocto 1.7.1 - Dizzy https://www.yoctoproject.org/downloads/core/dizzy171
Yocto 1.7 - Dizzy https://www.yoctoproject.org/downloads/core/dizzy17
Yocto 1.6 - Daisy https://www.yoctoproject.org/downloads/core/daisy16
